Why Legislative Control Is Weak

In one line

The devices assume a House that can decide against its own Government, and five features of the system ensure that it cannot: the Tenth Schedule, the guillotine, the executive's monopoly of financial initiative, the optional character of committee scrutiny, and the ordinance power.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: legislative control is weaker in operation than in design for five structural reasons, that the Tenth Schedule disqualifies a member who votes against his party's direction, so that no division on a motion of no-confidence or a cut motion is ever in doubt; that the guillotine permits outstanding Demands for Grants to be put and voted without discussion; that article 113(3) reserves the initiative in financial matters to the executive, so that the House may only assent, refuse or reduce; that the reference of a Bill to a committee is not automatic and a committee's report has by rule only persuasive value; and that articles 123 and 213 allow the executive to legislate by ordinance when the House is not in session.

First, what this chapter will not do

It will not give numbers. Assertions about sitting days, about the proportion of Bills referred to committees, about the number of ordinances promulgated or about attendance in committees are commonplace in writing on this subject, and this book holds no source for any of them.

The structural reasons are stronger anyway, because each is a provision or a rule that a candidate can cite and an examiner can check. A criticism anchored to article 113(3) cannot be answered by disputing a statistic.

1. The Tenth Schedule

The single most important reason, and chapter 1180 stated it. A member of a political party who votes or abstains contrary to a direction issued by that party, without obtaining its prior permission and without the vote being condoned within fifteen days, incurs disqualification.

Apply that to the devices.

A motion of no-confidence cannot succeed against a Government with a majority, because the majority cannot vote against it and remain members.

A cut motion cannot be carried for the same reason, so article 113(2)'s power to reduce a Demand exists and is never exercised.

A censure motion likewise.

So the devices that end in a division are decided before the debate begins, and their value is reduced to the record, which is the sanction this whole paper turns on.

And the criticism must be made fairly. The Tenth Schedule was enacted against defection for money, which had brought Governments down and made them; chapter 1150 noted that articles 75(1A) and (1B) were inserted in 2003 for related reasons. The instrument that stabilises government is the same instrument that removes the individual conscience the House's ultimate control was designed to consult. A good answer states the trade-off rather than only the complaint.